


Hipster Merlin and the Thousand-Year Secret

by beaubete



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: M/M, but cute enough on its own, kind of a coffeeshop AU if you squint, pretty much jossed by the last episode
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-08
Updated: 2013-02-08
Packaged: 2017-11-28 14:14:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/675302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beaubete/pseuds/beaubete
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written before the last episode aired: how it really should have ended--a little magic and a little intervention, and a whole wide world ahead to explore together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hipster Merlin and the Thousand-Year Secret

**Author's Note:**

> More ficcing for the Butt Brigade on tumblr!

He grins at the other baristas, slings his scarf around his neck.  It snags on his gauged ear; he carefully unhooks it, laughing with them.  His shift is over, and he’s got the whole weekend to himself.  Forever to himself, if he really wants it; it’s silly to think he’d need the pay when he’s had hundreds of years to learn how to not need it.  He can take care of himself, but he needs something to do.  Needs to know he’s helping someone; no one notices or cares if a barista only sticks around for a couple of years before leaving town.  He thinks maybe the next go ‘round will be a record shop—he did that a while in the 70s, and he misses the smell of vinyl warmed on the turntable.  It goes with his look now; no one will flinch to see a tall, skinny kid in skinnier jeans and scarves working in a record shop.  It’s almost as expected as seeing him in the coffee shop.

He hums under his breath as he swings through the corner store, picks up a few things like tomatoes and ginger, amazed that no one cares that there are tinned oranges here, or that the black pepper doesn’t cost more than he earns in an entire year.  For the most part, he’s fairly well-adjusted, but sometimes it catches him around the head just how different things are now.  

—Well.  That’s because he’s got tonight on his mind.  Has had, actually, for weeks now—decades, really, spent waiting for just the right moment—but he’s been completely useless at work today.  Everyone assumed it was because he has a date tonight; it’s true, in a way.  He finishes up in the store and practically jogs home, taking the stairs two at a time.  The anticipation is going to kill him, has been threatening to kill him since he’d finally decided that now was the time.  The bag goes on the kitchen counter to be forgotten—he’ll remember it later when the butter has softened to a soggy lump of greased wax paper in the bottom of the bag—and he lifts back the rug to keep it from getting dirty.

He takes a deep breath.  Another.  Another, until he feels he’s going lightheaded with the flush of oxygen in his system, and he lets them out slowly, pushes his lungs until they’re emptier and emptier.  When he fills them again, he can feel his pulse behind his eyelids.  There’s a potion to make, first, with herbs he’s pulled from the spring mix bagged salad and a handful of other innocuous things that would have taken forever to gather back when he was learning from Gaius but can now be had for less than a tenner.  A seed he’d have had no chance of finding, but that he’d cultivated the plant himself from that horrible day, knowing he’d want it.  He grinds it with a stone pestle, feeling the flush of magic as it dances up from his stomach to his fingertips.  His eyes burn a moment, though from the fragrant dust that’s beginning to cloud around his hands as he works or from the way the magic answers his call so easily, he’s not sure.  The mirror over the mantle shows his eyes gold, and he swears, catching his own wistful expression in it before rushing over to cover it.  Just the one mirror tonight, of course—he wants to be able to control this thing that’s happening.  No accidents, no hands coming through the mantle piece while arms come through the reflection on the telly.

The mirror he’s using is large, ornately gilded and elegant.  It’s got not a patch on the ones he remembers from the palace; this one’s made in Bangladesh, but it’s big enough to fit a large man’s whole reflection, and that’s all he needs, really.  All other reflective surfaces covered, he waits until the concoction has cooled before smearing the glass with a palmful of green, herby pulp.  The glass heats beneath his fingers as he murmurs coaxing spells at it, every inch of the glass streaked with green as he empties the mortar onto it.  He can see glimpses through the mess, pictures of a castle long forgotten by everyone else.  He sees him standing there, knows the mirror he’s looking through, and he could laugh at the befuddled expression on that familiar face.  A mouth moves; he can’t hear through the rush of blood in his ears; a hand comes through the glass and he takes it, gently pulling until Arthur stands there, blinking into the flat’s artificial light.

“Merlin?” Arthur asks.

“Oh, I’ve missed you.”  It’s not the smooth, cool greeting he’s intended, but it’s the truth.  The words he’s practiced dry up in his mouth and he settles for a wan, hopeful smile.  ”Arthur.”

“Where are we?” Arthur asks.  ”How did we get here?”  Not ‘how did I get here?’, but he includes Merlin as always.  That same feeling that’s always gripped him around Arthur threatens to pull him under again; it took him years to understand that feeling, longer still to name it.  He licks his lips.

“I brought you here.  I’ve,” Merlin says, reaching up to feel the piercings that he wears now, the modern hairstyle, the thousands of nearly-invisible ways he’s adapted to this era.  ”I’ve waited such a very long time to see you again.”

“What are you talking about, Merlin?” Arthur demands.  His back is very straight and still, and it is this more than anything that marks him as from a previous time—no one stands so straight anymore, with such authority or power.  This is Arthur, King Arthur, standing here in Merlin’s cheap little flat over the chip shop.  ”We just finished breakfast earlier.  I’ve gone—” Arthur blinks, flustered, “I’ve gone to think of some way of appealing to Gwen.  Again.  Appealing to my wife again.”

“You never wanted Gwen,” Merlin says, and by the gods that’s not even a little bit of what he wants to have said.  

“We’re not having this argument again, Merlin,” Arthur says, tone sharp, and Merlin agrees fervently, silently.  They’re not.

“No, I just—” he starts, but Arthur cuts him off.

“No buts, Merlin.”  He reaches for Merlin’s hands, then, pulling him closer.  ”That’s not—it’s just—it’s not something that can happen, Merlin.”

“But it can now!” Merlin cries, sweeping an arm at the flat.  ”Here.  Now.  That’s something that can happen.”

“What do you mean, Merlin?  Where have you brought me?” Arthur asks, cocking a brow.  ”A secret love nest?  In the mirror?”

“Of course not,” Merlin says.  ”I’ve.”  He bites his lip, flushing.  ”I’ve missed you terribly.  It’s been so long.”

“Just since breakfast,” Arthur says softly, touching Merlin’s cheek.

“No,” Merlin says.  He folds himself into Arthur, and Arthur holds him.  He can barely bring himself to hope this is real, that this is honestly Arthur beneath his cheek.  Arthur toys with his scarf, pokes a finger through the loops of his ears, and makes an exaggerated sigh of annoyance before Merlin lets himself step back, eyes wet.  He laughs bitterly.  ”They’re going to be frantic when you don’t show up for that tournament with Mordred this afternoon.  I know I was.”

Arthur looks at him carefully, then folds him into another embrace.  Finally, he pulls away to look at Merlin’s face.  ”Merlin, how did you bring me here?”

“Er.”  Merlin blinks at him owlishly.  ”Did I forget to mention I have magic?”


End file.
